Endlight Dreams
by DeSaints
Summary: The telling of the afternoon and night that the party spent in Phon Coast. Vaan and Penelo, Basch's past and a indirect proposition by Balthier. All about their own motives to be there and what they desire the most. Heavy Spoilers! One shot. R&R please


The afternoon was at its end, and the extinguishing sun's light reflected still on the cool streams of the sea at Hunter's Camp far horizon. The clouds were passing by that moment, and so the light went through them, creating pillars of blazing red, mixed with the golden yellow that was reflected by the silvery waters of the farther horizon. At that point of day, the sands were no longer white or of a pale gilded, but of a warm pink and sometimes, in those areas closer to the water line, a crystalline blue.

"_So this is Archadia… how beautiful."_ Ashe whispered while leaving the hut and looking to the sea, had she given just a few steps. Her tone was not of joy or awe, but of sadness. For as long she remembers, she had hated the Empire and its land, whishing nothing more than their fall to a pile of dust. But now it was different. She only felt… sorrow. Sorrow for hating a land that she never had seen but judged yet still, a land that now showed an extraordinary beauty in any sense. Sorrow for thinking that there was a land as beautiful as Dalmasca, her mother land. She felt as a traitor. What sort of person would say that, she above them all, so much her had lost to them; her husband and her future. Her home and her father and family. How could her?

"_The Phon Coast is famous for its sunsets, Princess."_ Balthier said as he approached the static princess who looked for infinity in the reflexes of the liquid fire that the sea had become.

"_Princess… are you crying?"_ He asked softly, although deeply astonished.

"_What? Oh, nothing Balthier. Just__… another memory."_ She said in fainting nature before leaving him incredibly surprised, following her movements until she reached the lonely fire at the cape's end. That was a first time for him. To his absolute shock he saw the strong willed and determined woman crumble before him at the sound of that simple question. More startling yet was the fact he felt it. For the first time in many years someone outside his own world and past touched him. Someone had cracked his disguise with which he escaped his history and forged another life, concealing Ffamran within Balthier. A single moment did more than torture could have dreamt to do. Her voice and her tears were enough to cause the cold shiver down his spine, who alerted him to his true nature. What was Ffamran feeling inside? He believed in his own vulnerability at this moment, when the absence of the silver tongued, dashing sky pirate with nothing to lose and all to gain, one who didn't cared nothing more than his own profit, become clear. He looked once more to Ashe, but not as resolute princess but as Ashe, a 19 year old girl who had just the poor luck to be born in the worst time possible.

"_Her majesty is upset. It is clear as water."_ Basch talked reaching up with Balthier. He had been watching them, and decided to intervene. _"We lay close to our goal every step of the way. Now the time of trials is about to start."_

"_I don't think so, Captain.__ She is not worried. She's sad." _He replied, looking into the brave Captain's eyes with clear and adamant certainty. Basch only smiled and left him by his own turn to watch the endlessly movement of the ocean, who now streamed amidst bright sapphire tones.

Vaan and Penelo were together at the verge of the water, and after a day of travel, they were enjoying some well earned relieves, namely an excellent spot at the beach, where they could lay in the comforting and warm sands. They were in total silence, since the only sound was just the water's slow sliding noise through the sand. Penelo was almost sleeping, with her a pale and delicate cheek under the constant care of the afternoon's fading light, shined back to the sky by her long golden hair that she had unfolded and loosen up at that moment. Vaan by the other hand had his eyes wide open. Although he tried to be discreet, he just couldn't stop looking at her; now that she lied by his side. She opened her eyes for a moment, but before she could close them again, he asked.

"_What did you wanted to mean with…__«I didn't know what I would do if you weren't here. » remember? In Lowtown that afternoon."_

"_It's been so long… why do you ask?"_

"_I…never mind."_

"_Hey, tell me. What's the matter?"_

"_Why are you here, Penelo? Or me? What's our role in this story? Why we proceed? Why we go on, even that we know that we can never change anything…"_ He mumbled in a cheerless murmur, which made Penelo herself ask the same.

"_Vaan… we can change things. We can make Dalmasca free once more. There is hope in Ivalice while people like Al-Cid or Larsa exist__."_

"_I'm not talking about that. So many people we have lost… so many people who we will never see again, with only their faces to remember. And even that will fail us in time… will it change anything? Perhaps. For the good, yeah. But, they will stay dead and soon forgotten. In the end, what's important stays the same…"_

"_Ah… I would give everything to see my parents again. To see Rabanastre the way she once was…"_ She sits in the sands, with her long and silky golden hair pouring down by her back, flowing at the flavour of gentle wind of South, much like the ocean itself. _"But they are part of the past, as we are part of the future. Time can't go backwards."_

"_You're right. It can't. When Balthie__r asked of my purpose among us, I couldn't answer. At the time I thought it was because of my brother. To avenge him. To punish the Empire. But since that night in the Gran Kiltias balcony I…I realised that it was not."_ He stopped and with the first smile in days he looked upon her and continued, while slipping his fingers at her visage _"It was because of you. I fight for you."_

She said not a word, but the sudden glow that filled her eyes announced more than could ever be expressed by them. Showing a rare side of his personality, Vaan revealed in a fading voice to her while his face become closer and closer to hers. _"In that night, I putted all the pieces together. My despair upon your kidnapping, my secret happiness when you said that you would join me in Ashe's quest… all of it. I'm not here for a thing I can't change. I'm here to protect something that I don't wanna change. You. I'll never forget your shinning face by the Moon's rays of silver light, neither your smile when you see me stare at you. Never."_

"_Vaan…"_ She pronounced just before leading her lips into his, uniting them in that eternal moment, binding their souls to each other, as they always had belonged. Vaan's hand descended through her neck and soon he stopped kissing her, watching her face covered by Sun's light for a last time before kissing her with more passion that he knew he had.

The central part of the distant edge of the sky was now of a deep scarlet, while the rest of sky dome was in an also deep oceanic blue, pin pointed by countless orbs in it's darkest places. Basch was practicing alone by a camp fire, handling and swinging with dexterity and skill his Mythril Blade, his loyal Order sword. In its blade the dying sunset was being mirrored, as well would be the dawn's light, just a few hours from there point. Its light bathed Basch's eyes, who ever focused and concentrated, kept cutting the air with a swift move and sharp sound.

"_You're not a Captain by mistake."_

Basch suddenly stopped, and then looked to Fran who was sitting in the nearest wooden box, observing him tightly. He grinned and sheathed his blade, putting it aside.

"_Maybe."_ He answered in a distant manner, seating in the sands in front of her.

"_But you're not all skill, but also passion. You fight the battle that is your life because it has meaning to you, it is not?"_

"_What makes you say that?"_

"_The_ _way you see your foes, how you treat your friends. There is something more to it, in you."_

He laughed then, looking her face to face. _"Indeed, you remind me of her."_

"_Her?"_

"_Yes. One I knew long ago… the source of my… «Passion». She was like you. Even at our young ages, she was not a typical of maid of sorts. She was woman of valour, of pride and responsibility, a woman not given too many words."_

"_What happened?"_ The viera asked, intrigued by his nostalgia at saying that. She knew that something bad had occurred and it probably explain Basch's coolness and sense of life. He was a man that, even in time of war, killed only what need to be killed, that didn't seek neither carnage and hadn't any love for battle.

"_She was from Landis. When the Empire attacked the border, and did overcome it… they hatefully__ razed everything to the ground. I was then no Captain, just a rookie soldier stationed in a garrison near the second wall. I barely knew how to wield a sword, even less how to make a war. I'd never seen the fires of war and I didn't want to see it at all. So, I foolishly left the garrison and hoped into the chocobo and I ran to our village. Noah had been sent to the front lines in the Eastern border and…"_ He stopped, silently moaning for a few moments, continuing afterwards while feeling the warmth of then fire by approaching his hand to it. _"I spent one last hour with her. I was only awoken to my impendent obligation when I heard the shots of the canons impact on the lands outside the village. I ran outside, barely managing to maintain my swords attached to my belt. It was then she grabbed my hand and stole my kiss for the last time. We both had hope, but in the end, we already knew what would follow. « Together forever and ever. » Our last words…together anyways."_

"_I__'m sorry Captain."_

"_Don't be. If it wasn't for her death I wouldn't be here right now. I wouldn't have fled to Dalmasca, I would be today a normal citizen or I could be dead. Either I thank the gods that not. I'm content to be part of a larger cause, something that surpasses me.__"_ He stopped looking to the stars above and stared to Fran, on the other side of the fire, with another nostalgic smile, although quite sad._ "I realised that that was my fate in the moment of my return, and I saw her body amidst many fallen imperials, still holding the blade in her warm hands."_

"_A man who lives wholly to somebody else's causes you are, Captain."_ She stated as she'd now finally understand the man who had been puzzling her Viera mind for days. Unlike Balthier or Ashe, who were both fighting for things of material nature, much like every hume she had met until then, he was fighting for an idea. An ideal carried by his motto of self sacrifice to what's worthiest. He needs not a compensation for an unspoken oath, dictated long ago in the shrouds of time.

"_Aye. But without it… I'm nothing. I'm no more than a leaf in the wind, doome__d to disappear into nothingness, and nothing can't remember his origin and his mistakes."_

Unlike all of them, who were running from their own ancient times and experience, Basch actually went along to embrace further his history. His duty to Ashe was not only borne from simple loyalty, but as a way to keep himself true to the person we was and wanted to be. Or so, it was what Fran managed to comprehend before he left to his hut, were he continued his vigilante commitment, watching endlessly the whole camp atop the hill.

Balthier had finally summoned the courage to go speak with Ashe, who by her own lone self still observed the now oceanic dark waters. The fire in that isolated cape was already extinct and its ashes already cold; spread by the light winds of East into Ashe's clothing. But she didn't cared. The weight of indignity was too heavy on her heart. Two hours had been, and still she thought. What daughter of Dalmasca would find so much splendour in the enemy's motherland, more even than in its own home? Maybe the words of Basch, when her prince's life was taken in battle, we're not as wrong as she thought. _"Maybe I'm no prepared for the burden of rule…"_

"_I remember when I completed my instruction for Ministry in these shores. Those days are long now, but their shadows still endure."_ He said while seating next to her.

"_What you want Balthier? More compensation?" _She asked swiftly and directly, looking at him with an angry expression on her face. _"This time around I have nothing more that you can call valuable."_

"_No, I'm not looking for compensation. I'm here to tell you a story."_

"_If it is more of your stories about piracy or about how did you rob that guy or another, you have nothing to say to me."_

"_Edgy, aren't we? No, no more piracy for today. Just pretend you're not talking to Balthier at all. Think of me… like somebody else."_ He said in a distinctive way that made Ashe look back at him with a feeling of oddness.

"_What are you doing?"_

"_As I was about to tell you princess, let me tell a tale. Once upon a time, there was a little boy, born in the high aristocracy of a prosperous kingdom. Him, whom are we calling FMB, was his father's and mother's jewel, their utmost pride. And he liked to do what was requested from him, to live up to their expectations; especially to his father's, FMB's biggest hero. He was a wise man, who worked in the depths of knowledge with a hope to bring up a world to his son were there would be no war, no disease. Those three lived a happy life__ until one terrible day, when a simple and quite common accident destroyed forever their dreams. The transport machine that the mother was using felled, thanks to a problem in the magicite stone. FMB and his father were devastated. And, in that rainy day…"_

Ashe was captive to the tone in wich Balthier was speaking those words, so charged with emotion. Happiness at first, then to depressive attitude and finally weariness. She indeed thought that she was not hearing Balthier, but another. One used to suffer, one devoid of any rushed outlooks unlike the sky pirate she knew.

"_So did FMB's father switch his work. No longer would he search the paths covered in light but those mysterious, and many times dark. He began to work in the same thing that took is beloved wife, his adored son's mother. His intentions were good, but like everything that starts this way, he too became twisted. Alas, he braved into unknown territory and returned as shadow of himself. FMB slowly realised the extent of his loss. An orphan he was now, both parents taken by the same thing. One doomed to die and vanish in soil, other condemn to an eternal prison within his mind, obsessed. To FMB, it was the same. The difference is that his greatest hero was dead in life. He left, searching from freedom. No longer did he __manage to keep his mind sane and he ran. Ran in search for freedom. But he found death, as was reborn as another."_ He stopped and gazed Ashe, who had been staring to him all the time. _"Now here's the question princess. Ffamran found in «death» his wish. You can do the same._

"_Ah, Balthier... I'm not you. Things aren't as simple as that and…"_

"_I know you Ashe. And things are never simple. Ironically, I too know to much well the chains of load, of expectancy. I see you everyday taking steps that you wouldn't want to take if there was not those chains. The true question is: what is more important to you. Duty, or your own life, your true identity?"_

Their eyes crossed paths and in those silent moments accompanied only but the dim and cool sound of the flowing wind through the rock edifications of that beach, and the arriving water at the shore. He got up, and extends his hand to her, a gesture that she acknowledged and meditated about.

"_I do as I must. Even if that __requires sacrifices, including dreams."_ She sadly deviating her look to the serpentine clouds above their heads. _"There are people who cannot simply run from their obligations."_

"_Everybody can do it. It's just a matter of will. You shall realise that before the end."_ He left with a cold smile, and it would be quickly vanished in the darkness if she hadn't asked:

"_Ffamran__!"_

She didn't expect to Balthier to respond, but when he did it, she didn't hesitate to ask:

"_Don't forget to bring back Balthier by the morning."_

"_Sure thing, Princess. Sure thing that he will like to see his further compensation by the morning."_ He replied at last with a mischievous grin that took off Ashe's smile.

"_Now that sounds more like him…"_ She said to herself. But that hadn't changed a bit the situation, in fact it just had worsen. He knew how it was. Maybe it is why he asked what he asked. What if she would say yes? What if she abandoned everything and everyone to their luck and got off with him; both free to go and do what ever they liked, more importantly, to love freely. Her expression changed then and she remembered his last words that night.

"_**You Shall Realise Before The End."**_

"_Maybe I will."_ She said finally.


End file.
